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Mastering Social Media for Unforgettable Events with Dot Lung
39 Plays9 months ago
This episode Leanne and Tanita sit down with “Mother of Social Dragons” Dot Lung to talk about her Dragon formula, event social activations and the importance of authenticity.
Plus keep an eye out for a bonus issue recorded with Dot, looking at influencer marketing and comms. It will be dropping over the next few weeks.
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Transcript
Transformation of Events by Social Media
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to Eventful Encounters. As you can see, we're in this fab studio today. I'm Tanita. And I'm Leanne. And on today's episode, we've got a very exciting topic actually. um So, Tanita and I have kind of been looking at like social media and social media strategies when it comes to events.
00:00:22
Speaker
and how kind of social media has changed the landscape of traditional events now. So it kind of makes events a bit more interactive. The journey kind of becomes a bit more continuous. And then also it helps with kind of engagement pre and post event as well. And actually we had an event recently which we didn't get to go to and we had full on FOMO, didn't we? We did, yeah. We had FOMO. And it was mainly because of like the social content and what people were putting out about that event. It was really good to be
Insights from Dot Long on Social Media
00:00:50
Speaker
there.
00:00:50
Speaker
um So we have a very special guest today which Tanita will introduce now who's going to help us kind of demystify social media, understand it a little bit more, understand how it can make our events better. So handing over to Tanita who will introduce our guest. So today's guest is joining us all the way from My cards here say San Francisco, but as you'll see, she travels the world. She's social media and digital marketing in powerhouse known as the mother of social dragons, specialising in building effective social media and digital strategies. Key element of her approach is her renowned six step dragons formula.
00:01:25
Speaker
for content creation, which we'll hear all about, I'm sure. But welcome to inventfulencounters.long. Well, thank you so much for having me. Dot is actually short for Dorothy, and long means dragon in Mandarin. So not yeah and not only am I a huge fan of Game of Thrones, yeah dragons is actually the social media strategy that I've got to teach over 150,000 students worldwide. And I'm really excited to share that with you today.
00:01:52
Speaker
Very excited when you said Dorothy because that's the name of my niece. yeah and that we don Little Dorothy shout out there. So welcome, Dot. um I think it'd be really great for you to kind of share with our listeners just how they can use social media in a way that kind of makes their events engaging, how they can help build you know with the build up to events, and and what you know any kind of trends and things that you think would be really insightful. Sure, I mean, social media is a huge part of live events now. yeah and
00:02:27
Speaker
even more so than ever, especially after since COVID, it was everything was just online. Yeah, exactly. um You know, I remember during the pandemic, everyone was like, Oh, how's your business going? Like, well, we've never been doing more events. Wow. never Yeah.
Event Communication Phases
00:02:42
Speaker
and so just building a strategy on like how are you going to promote an event you know build up that hype and get attention to sell tickets online tickets or you know offline tickets just you know getting people aware of your event has you know never been more easy to do with social media yeah cool So um I always like to, you know, when we're talking about creating a strategy for event communication, we'd have three phases. So the first is the pre-production phase, like building the hype and getting people to spread the word.
00:03:17
Speaker
The second phase is the actual live production, what we're doing on the day of the event, what are we doing to prepare for the live event, how is it going to roll out, and then um obviously post-production, so after the event, how are we going to continue the FOMO and continue the conversation? Exactly, and it makes people look for the next job and the next job hopefully. Exactly, because at the end of the day you want people to remember the event and remember to buy their tickets, right? So that's kind of yeah the goal here is to get people to talk about it and share it with their friends. That's ultimately what the purpose of social media is. yeah
00:03:57
Speaker
How do you think social media has opened doors to be more inclusive and far reaching engagement in the event space?
Building Communities through Social Media
00:04:02
Speaker
Interesting question. What do you mean by more like inclusive? and I think what I mean by that is kind of more like you can get a broader audience, you can get far further reaching. I mean, we managed to find you all the way in San Francisco, for instance. The power of social.
00:04:18
Speaker
Power of social media is that there are no borders, there are no boundaries, and people that, you know, I always say your vibe attracts your tribe. Oh, I love that. and We'll be using that. So the more that you are putting your vibe and your brand out there, the type of people you will be, those are the type of people and community you're going to be attracting.
00:04:42
Speaker
so It's interesting you use the word inclusive because yes, you're able to you know spread your message like very far outside you know your normal you know country's boundaries or yeah borders. But more than that is that you are going to be able to include the right type of people. so yeah Audience building and community building is really important to know who you're
Platform Selection Strategies
00:05:09
Speaker
targeting. yeah So that's like the first thing that we need to establish when we're building a strategy is well, who are you trying to include? Yeah. Yeah. So are your people, you know, there's tons of social media platforms. We have, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I know. I mean, you want coming up. Exactly. So like.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yes, we can include all the social media platforms and conclude everybody, but do we really want to? I think it's more important yeah that we choose the right platforms where your target audience is hanging out. yeah We thought this as well, didn't we? Because quite often when we've looked at our social media channels for our venue, ah originally we thought it'll all be Instagram, didn't we? yeah you know it's all about the images, and but actually the audience that we attract are predominantly Facebook users, and that's because of their demographic and their age and et cetera. So it does make a difference, doesn't it? You know what's hilarious is that when I was in you know college or something, people were already saying like, oh, Facebook is dying. It's like it's dead. I'm like, if you look at the data, Facebook has never been growing so much yeah so fast. It still is growing, yeah.
00:06:23
Speaker
And there's more investment going into it. There are just more users every day. Their monthly you know user average is growing every month. yeah So despite what the young kids are saying, you know they're all on TikTok.
00:06:38
Speaker
Hey, actually, depending on who you're trying to attract, and you know our parents are on, um you know our I'm a millennial, so our parents are on Facebook, our grandparents are on Facebook. yeah This community is growing, and it's growing worldwide.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. Facebook is still the largest social media platform out there. So if you want to talk about inclusivity, get on Facebook. like Exactly. And the great thing about Facebook is that you can also target so well with the meta ads. Yeah.
00:07:10
Speaker
That's what we found, isn't it? it's The targeting that we can do on Facebook is so kind of beneficial to us as a business. But it is that whole worldwide connectivity. I mean, even like from like a personal perspective, like we have family spread all over the world. So I have lots of family based over in Malaysia. And this morning, I was Facebook messaging ah you know my cousin, my second cousin that's based in Malaysia. Timezone, obviously, it was morning here, evening for her, but we were like,
00:07:37
Speaker
Facebook messaging and it's a great way to kind of connect with people yeah worldwide, isn't it? So totally agree with that. But and how would you say the trends on social media have kind of evolved over time because you hit the nail on the head. That's a very British saying, sorry. So ah you kind of, you know,
00:07:54
Speaker
totally got that point where you said during the pandemic social media was probably at its all-time high wasn't it but then actually following on from that what would you say the trends are in social media now like what should we kind of keep up to date with and look into more um and like what could our listeners kind of gain from learning about the new trends or the upcoming trends or maybe even trends for next year?
Creating Unique Trends
00:08:18
Speaker
I actually am not a huge proponent of like following trends. yeah i'm ah i'm I'm more in support of like, well, let's create our own trends and get people to jump on it.
00:08:32
Speaker
um so I'm sure that I'm sure we can like just go on YouTube or you know Google you know what are the hottest trends for 2025 that we need to be aware of and um even when Instagram reels started coming out everyone's like oh you need to use this trending sound so you can get more views yeah and it's like is that really the purpose of like using the trending sounds it's like you're losing your own style your own tone of voice sort perception converting yourself yeah Yeah, you're just changing into what the trend is. And trying to conform. Instead of being your own brand, having your own style, setting your own trends. So I think I obviously love to suggest different types of trends that a brand can maybe jump on to look cool. But at the end, you still need your own style and your own brand of voice. It should still be relevant.
00:09:23
Speaker
so I can honestly say they're like, let's not follow trends, but let's figure out how we can tell the story better. What type of format should we be using? For example, you know, everyone was talking about let's get on Instagram reels like short video format like this is.
00:09:41
Speaker
the end all, be all, right? Which is still technically true because there's everyone's, we communicate through short form video. We communicate through reels. Like I send my boyfriend like 20 reels a day to tell him how I'm feeling. I do that with my husband. I do the same with my husband. So it is an important format to learn how to use to create relatability. But Instagram also just released carousel posts for up to 20 images. Yeah.
00:10:09
Speaker
like and that's a huge deal right because it's evolving isn't it it's basically telling you how can you like use this format to create better stories to create you know content that suits what you need what like these are just tools yeah right so how can you best use a tool to tell your story and personally for me like i don't you know i'm less of a video person and more of you know a still image or yeah photographic image. So yeah maybe carousels is a more attractive format for me to create more content. yeah right So at the end of the day, you have to use the, not the trend, but the type of whatever format is going to enable you to create more and ah and really build your story and share your story in the best way.
Authentic Storytelling on Social Media
00:10:58
Speaker
and a toolkit isn't it but tapping into it so your brand is still authentic because exactly like you said like you don't want to just use the trending sounds or you know the the current trends that actually if they're not in keeping with your brand or your business or your event like how would that even work for you so it's about being authentic too Absolutely. And that's the A and the dragon, right? oh The A and D dragon is really staying true to, you know, what your brand values are, your mission, your vision, and, you know, telling a story and you're in your own way. One of the biggest problems that I'm seeing right now is that all the content is looking exactly the same. same oh yeah of a sudden Why? Because you're all using the same trends. You're using the same edit, the same.
00:11:38
Speaker
and it's like no one's original anymore. I agree with that, 100%. I think it's about, ah because exactly that, if you do hop, if everybody hops onto to the same trends, then everybody's using the same trend in music, the same trend in styles, and actually, we all start to look quite uniform, so it is about- How do you differentiate between them?
00:11:59
Speaker
And on that note, how can event professionals choose the best platforms to meet their goals and to target their right audience? So it's really to discover where is your target market hanging out. Are they the people that are more on Twitter yeah or X, you know? I don't know anyone that's calling it X. Everyone's still calling it Twitter.
00:12:17
Speaker
Are they on threads? Are they more, are they, you know, TikTok, TikTokers? Like what age are you targeting? What type of people you said, you know, for your audience is mainly on Facebook. yeah Well, it depends also what country you're, you know, your people are in. yeah There are certain platforms that are more popular that have, you know, Facebook is more popular in certain countries versus, you know, in the US we're very Instagram centric. yeah But, you know, I currently live in Israel and everybody's on Facebook in yeah Israel.
00:12:44
Speaker
um Whereas in Japan, they're not, you know, they're more, they value anonymity, so they're more Twitter users, like you don't have to, you know, put your ah real profile face, they usually use, you know, an animated. Avocalls, oh yeah. So I think it just really depends where
Boosting Engagement through User Content
00:13:00
Speaker
your people hang out. If you're doing corporate business events, I would definitely invest on LinkedIn, yeah because this is a growing social media platform, especially in the business world. and we Yeah, business to business.
00:13:11
Speaker
elements. Definitely, I think it's a great platform, but um what type of event is it? you know what Depending on what type of of event is it, will enable you to discover, is this event an Instagram platform? For example, I used to promote a lot of music festivals, so we're definitely like on Instagram and stories and on TikTok.
00:13:37
Speaker
Think about where your audience is spending the most time and that's the platform that you want to invest in. Sounds like a good sound advice to me. Yeah. And then how about kind of engaging with attendees? So like obviously like you said, totally depends on what the event is, who your audience is, but do you have any tips that could kind of help people to kind of maintain that attendee engagement because, like we said, we wanted to go to an event recently, didn't get a chance to go to it. We had full-on FOMO and it was because they were encouraging people to post throughout the event. They had the hashtags that we could follow the hashtag and see what was happening. But what would your advice be for engaging attendees and creating that element of FOMO? User-generated content as well, isn't it? User-generated content, we love that, don't we? For ourselves, for our venue.
00:14:31
Speaker
UCG, that's like the biggest free type of content that we need to strategize in advance and figure out how can we get the audience to create the content for us. yeah So we, you know, we're going to have you all drop off. Exactly. So how can we encourage them to use our hashtags? How can we set up at the event, you know, photo calls and different Instagrammable moments and create yeah for them? How can we do giveaways and you know prizes and get you know even people at home to participate in these events and get them to vote for their best speakers. I went to a conference recently where after every speaker, you know they would have
00:15:10
Speaker
a voting poll wow and you know get people involved with different prizes and things that they can win if they're constantly participating in the event activities. I love that idea. I actually, when I was like looking at social media and engagement, I was looking at like polls and then like live Q&As and how they can all kind of help and help give the event a more rounded approach, I suppose, as well. Yeah, something that I also really appreciated at the last event I've been to is really providing the Instagram or Facebook as a resource so that when I'm at the event, like whether um you know this is a conference or a music festival, yeah like I want to be able to go to the social media and get the all the information I need on the event. Oh, 100%.
00:16:01
Speaker
like who's speaking Who's speaking live right now? What's that three o'clock? There better be the events program pinned to the you know so we have the yeah yeah of the Instagram pin post so that you know there's like information that I need to really navigate the conference better. and When is you know the main keynote or when does the prize giveaway?
00:16:23
Speaker
um really like you being able to use social media so that it serves a purpose for your live audience. Yeah. Like how can you make their experience better so that when they do go visit your social media page they feel like oh they thought of everything. yeah Like, they're so nice. Like, I have the schedule here. Everything's to hunt. Yeah, I know like what's already, you know, i I have the three key takeaways from the last conference, so I can, you know, tweet and share that. Like, they already did it for
Introduction to Dragon's Formula
00:16:53
Speaker
me. share it then and and take it
00:16:55
Speaker
that way Tell us more about your dragon's formula dots. Yes. I was reading about this. It sounds very exciting. So the dragon is based upon six main pillars for any type of content strategy that you will ever create for any brand in any country. Yeah. And this has really been... i This is a strategy that I created in 2018 after working in marketing for 10 years. So it's kind of like the accumulation of all of my knowledge and experience. And I'm still teaching it at different universities all around the world. and
00:17:31
Speaker
And it really works. So if I'm going to share this with youo you, know it's very powerful. Use it very use hip very wisely. um But when you are planning a content strategy, you have to begin with a D in the dragon.
00:17:47
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And this is like the head of the dragon and it's all the head is like, you know, the dialogue that you're going to be creating. So D stands for dialogue. okay So what is the conversation that we're going to have with our audience? Because the purpose of why social media exists is to have a conversation, right? It's for human to human connection. So what is that conversation going to be about? And this is how you can start creating, you know, what your brand pillars are, your content pillars is figure out, well, what are the, what is the dialogue? Yeah. And the R in the dragon is all about relatability. So how can we make these conversations, the dialogue, relatable?
00:18:26
Speaker
a Because if you want to get more likes, you want to get more shares, it's all about getting the audience to relate. Yeah, exactly exactly. And relatability is directly correlated with shareability because the more that they like it, the more that they're going to share it. yeah And everyone asks, well, how can I make my content more relatable? Well, the number one thing that you can learn to create more relatable, engaging content is to learn storytelling. ah We talk about this a lot. So learning too how to tell a story on social media, that's a true skill. And the yeah better that you get at that, the more relatable your content is. And the more people are going to share it.
00:19:07
Speaker
Because the one thing that we're all trying to do on social media every day, this is why I send my boyfriend 20 reels a day. Because we're trying to share something that, oh my god, it's so relatable. Yeah, 100%. And but beside you're like making this emotional connection. Yeah.
00:19:22
Speaker
If you were my husband with my friends, everybody would consent in each of the things. I'm glad I'm not the only one. No, you're not, you're not. The A in the Dragon, we talked about earlier, it's all about authenticity, like saying true to who you are because everyone's making the same content, everyone like stuff looks alike, like how can you actually be original? Well, the way to be original is to be you. I love that, that's so true, isn't it?
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, and you really don't want to, you know, fake it till you make it or like, you know, try and jump on and copy everyone else's content. And it's not you and you don't you become everything but authentic then, don't you? Exactly. And your vibe attracts your tribe. So the worst thing about, you know, faking it till you make it, you get fake followers. yeah If you stay authentic from the beginning, you'll attract real true gung-ho fans. and yeah That's the a real fun to do. That's what we're here for. We're trying to build a community of like minds. Yeah, like that.
00:20:13
Speaker
And the G in the Dragon is all about giving value. Okay. Give, give, give. And then, um you know, remembering that the reason why social media works is because it's a exchange. So the more you give, the more you're going to get. Yeah, that's very true. So as a business owner, what kind of things can you give your audience? Are they, you know, besides discounts and promos and giveaways? Yeah. How can you create you? Like you guys are creating this podcast, right? This is like giving them real good content. Yeah. And education and helping people. Yeah. To get insights.
00:20:49
Speaker
You hit the nail on the head. It's all about helping people. It's all about helping people. At the end of the day, how can we help people through our content and give
Serving the Community for Growth
00:20:59
Speaker
more? So that's the main essence of why the dragon works is because of the G. The G in the dragon is giving. The Owen dragon is all about sharing your opinion. Yeah. OK. Yeah. You know, opinions can ruffle some feathers, but, you know, it can also attract the right people to your community as well. Yeah, yeah and I agree with that.
00:21:20
Speaker
And the N in Dragon stands for a niche. So knowing exactly the specific type of person that you're trying to include in your community and how you can help them. So solving a specific problem for a specific person.
00:21:36
Speaker
And that is the dragon. And if you follow the dragon, you will end up with S. The S in dragon and Dragoon's theory is, you know, really why we're in business, right? Is how much we can sell, right? Yeah. So scaling and selling and scaling is the S in the dragon, but I actually recently changed dragon. that to how much we can serve at the end of the day. I totally agree with that. I always say like in the hospitality industry, the clues in the title, it's hospitality. So actually by giving people great service and by building great relationships with people, that's how we get repeat business because actually we are serving our customers and making sure that they have a great experience or a great time. And then ultimately they'll keep coming back to us. Absolutely. And that is, I'm going to have to include some of that into the formula. That's exactly it. Yeah. No, it sounds great. I think that's like really insightful. And actually I love how you have, you know, your dragons and how that helps with the method. And if you follow that method, then actually it's a winning formula for success, isn't it?
00:22:54
Speaker
So I think that insight will be so helpful to people. We're so grateful that you've decided to come onto our podcast, Dart, and thank you for your time and your insights. It's been very beneficial for us. We'll be using the dragon formula, won't we? Oh, we will, definitely. I've already made some notes in my head. Thank you for listening.
Conclusion and Farewell to Dot Long
00:23:12
Speaker
As always, a new episode of Eventful Encounters drops every month on all your favorite podcast platforms. And stepped to stay up to date with all things Eventful Encounters in these side rooms, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can find me at dot .long, D-O-T-L-U-N-G, every social media platform that exists. so I hope to see you at the you on the platform that you like best. and
00:23:33
Speaker
Don't be shy. Say hi. Oh, definitely. Well, thank you for your insights. start um Totally valuable. and It's been really interesting. And we know that you've got a jam-packed schedule while you're over here. So thank you for taking the time out to speak to us. It's been great. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Bye.